It is a simple matter for most people to scan a web page that is displayed in a typical browser application such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and quickly identify links (by default, any underlined text) to other pages that might be of interest to them. This rapid identification of linked sites is exceptionally useful whenever you are viewing a page that consists primarily of plain text, yet has many interspersed links to other web sites that contain material related to the content of the page currently being viewed. Pages with this type of structure abound on the Internet. Examples include the results pages displayed by search engines and “summary” sites (for example, those that summarize press coverage on key happenings for the day and provide links to the original news articles at the end of each summary for future reference).
Rapid identification of links is also very useful when looking at pages that consist primarily of images where the links are embedded buttons or graphics on the page. The ability to scan web pages and rapidly identify links to associated material allows the typical reader to quickly jump to other relevant sites and thereby allows them to efficiently sift through the large volume of data available on the Internet until they find a page that contains exactly what they were looking for.
People who are blind or who have severe visual impairments cannot perform a rapid visual scan-based identification of links on a given page. Instead, they must typically listen to the content of the entire page as its voiced to them by a screen reader application, remember the links as they are voiced, and then select the one they are interested in after the entire page has been voiced. This is time-consuming and places high demand on that person's short term memory to remember all of the links while simultaneously attempting to pay attention to the rest of the page as it is being voiced. Furthermore, many web pages are not optimally coded for use with a screen reader application. This results in “raw” HTML or other meaningless information being voiced to the user when links on those pages are interpreted by a screen reader.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for allowing a person who is visually impaired to more readily hear or read link information presented on a web page. The present invention addresses such a need.